A three-letter word, old, so often elicits a reaction. Laughter…denial…insult...

Certainly, Donald Trump, a year and a half younger than I
am, sees that word as a pejorative term. It's a shame that our culture
ascribes negativity to old and positivity to young.

As a child, my parents taught me that asking someone their age was
rude, especially if that person were female. Perhaps there was a connection with
the card game Old Maid? Or maybe it was a fear of where old falls on life’s
continuum—near the end where there is no continuing? It could be about
stereotypes of the elderly as bumbling and weak, worthy of laughter in cartoons.

When I taught seventh-grade, one day a student in my class
raised his hand and boldly asked me how old I was. Without hesitation, I said, “I’m
55.” The class giggled. To them old was something to be laughed at when
talking about adults. Another student spoke up, “No grown-up has ever answered
that question like you did.”

This was an opportunity for a teaching moment. “Why did you
laugh? Old is something that happens to everybody. It’s neither a good nor a bad word. It
just is. Although you may not believe it, you will be 55 one day too--at least I hope so. And I am not ashamed to tell anyone my age. It’s just another life
fact.”

I had traveled to Japan as a teacher in the Fulbright Memorial Teachers’
Fund and explained to my students how another country actually celebrates their elderly
citizens. Respect for the Aged Day is actually a public holiday which is held
on the third Monday of September every year.

Of course, age brings its challenges to all of us and is
accompanied with loss on various levels. However, old is also the accumulation
of many past and continuing rich experiences. If I denied age, then I would
deny the journey.

Photography involves more than the mere transfer of an image
from retina to film or media card. It is a visual outgrowth of personal
involvement and a vehicle of fulfillment thought creating.

I make photographs because, as a human, I am compelled to
communicate. In the process, a part of me becomes merged with a greater world.

There is always a suggestion of control—something in the
push of a button steals a second of eternity. Every time the image is captured,
there is a smug illusion of omnipotence. And I suppose there are “intimations
of immortality.” Each of us wants to leave behind some part of our uniqueness.
The purpose of life is to matter—to have it make a difference that we have
lived at all.

Maybe it is conceit which makes us believe that no one else
can express the world in quite the same way that we do. The paradox is that we
believe our vision is unique through our eyes but, at the same time, universal through
shared feelings.

Jed Dietz, founder of the Maryland Film Festival, and Ramona S. Diaz, director of "Motherland" documentary playing at the 2017 Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore, Maryland, in the Brown Center at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

I spent 94 minutes as a fly on the wall in the middle
of constant chaos as I watched Ramona S. Diaz’s “Motherland,” a documentary
about women in Manila’s National Maternity Hospital, one of the busiest
maternity hospitals in the world. The maternity unit at this Jose Fabella
Hospital boasts as many as 100 births a day, keeping the medical staff running
and beds more than full.

Amidst crying babies and the scurrying staff of a hospital
at capacity, Diaz brings me into a world unlike my maternity experience at
Baltimore's Sinai Hospital where I had a private and quiet room to myself and did not have to worry about bills I could not pay. Oddly, the constant
background noise contrasts with the strangely silent women as they give birth.
Perhaps they recognize on some level that the surrounding sounds can take care
of the noise while leaving the women to call on the silent strength they need to
live their lives.

In this film, the focus is on Kangaroo Mother Care, a ward
specializing in premature babies and complicated births. One woman is asked
where her "tube" is that she should have brought with her to the hospital — a tube
top she needs to wear to cover her baby snuggly against her breast,like a
kangaroo. Because the hospital lacks incubators, mothers are told keep
their newborns next to their body nearly 24/7.

Not only does the audio impact the feeling in this film, but
the visuals are powerful as the camera moves through the extremely
crowded ward, stops to show yet another baby being born, takes in the huge room
with staff moving like a constant stream and reveals beds filled with two
women, head to toe and toe to head, sharing the same bed. Even in the delivery room, women are crowded
together two to a bed to birth their babies.

As a fly on the wall, I admired the sisterhood of these
women, strangers sharing a bed and a common experience. These are poor women
who share what little they have. There is no bickering or cattiness many might
expect when so many women are crowded together in a stressful situation. They share advice, blankets, laughter, even
their own milk when another’s baby needs it.

Watching these women who are so poor that their husbands
cannot afford transportation to the hospital and who give birth to more
children than they can take care of, it is difficult for me to understand their
reluctance to accept birth control. The
hospital staff, however, does its best to convince the women that their lives
would be easier and better if they used birth control.

We observe close up conversations and feel the struggles and
doubts of these women intimately. It takes
someone with the empathy and skill of Diaz to succeed in finding quiet stories
in chaos and to make us care about the women living these narratives.

And it takes someone with the vision, passion and devotion of Jed
Dietz, founder/director of the Maryland Film Festival, to bring compelling works like this
to Baltimore.

I am told that Point
of View on public television will air this documentary sometime in October, but if you want to see it this weekend, it is playing again at 2 p.m.
Sunday, May 7, in the newly renovated, historic Parkway Theater on North Avenue.

I just ran across some student poetry from when I was an enrichment teacher in the 90's at George Fox Middle School. Some were displayed at Walter Reed Hospital in the pediatric ward for critically or terminally ill children and teenagers. The first one won a special recognition award. As an enrichment teacher, I worked with students from all levels of ability, including special education and gifted and talented. There is a mix of diverse students in these examples below. Over the years, I discovered that my students helped me get in touch with forgotten parts of my heart. I post their poems for you to hear the hearts of middle school students:

It's strange how something that was done more than 20 years ago can take on new layers of meaning today. A creative exercise I did with middle school students has caught my eye while cleaning out my file drawers. We called it cut up poetry. Another name is ransom poetry. I gave students scissors and a pile of magazines and newspapers. They then looked for ways to put together words and phrases they had cut out. These are some of the results: